Thursday, February 4, 2010

Global sea level rise monitoring secured for next decade

Environmental Expert via EUMETSAT: The transatlantic Jason-3 Programme has now been approved by EUMETSAT Member States thus ensuring a continuation of the series of measurements made by the Jason-2 satellite and its predecessors in support of meteorology, operational oceanography and in particular the monitoring of the sea level trend, a key indicator of climate change.

Today, Jason-2’s Ocean Surface Topography Mission provides a vital contribution to the monitoring of climate change, ocean circulation and weather. Jason-2 already supplies the much-needed data continuity essential for measuring the sea level trend, one of the key indicators of climate change. Jason-3 will continue the mission, ensuring the measurement of rising sea levels carried out by Jason-2, Jason-1 and TOPEX/Poseidon over the last 18 years. These high accuracy measurements have until now shown an average global annual sea level rise through the last 15 years of 3.3 millimetres.

…The Jason-3 programme is led by EUMETSAT and the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). NOAA already secured funding of the Jason-3 programme in 2009 at the level of €100 million and has given it top priority for securing climate-related measurements. In addition, the Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales (CNES), the French space agency, is making a significant in-kind contribution to the programme and will act at the technical level as the system coordinator. This in-kind contribution includes making available the Jason-3 Proteus satellite platform, its facilities and associated human resources….

June 2009 – At the studios of Cleanskies TV, I was interviewed about the costs of climate change, and discussed adaptation efforts underway in the US and around the world.

May 2009 – I helped draft the scenarios for Rising Waters, a multistakeholder scenarios effort focused on climate change adaptation in the Hudson Valley. The final report is now completed and available here.

May 2008 – I reviewed two books on climate and energy in the New Leader magazine: James Gustave Speth's The Bridge at the Edge of the World: Capitalism, the Environment and Crossing from Crisis to Sustainability, plus Robert Bryce's Gusher of Lies: The Dangerous Delusions of Energy Independence.

January 2008 – A very local paper covers a very global issue.... The Litchfield County Times in northwestern Connectictut ran an article in January 2008 about Carbon-Based.

Now available: Climate Change Adaptation in 2011

A selection of my writings from 2011, plus some of my posts, as well as links... all focusing on the risks of climate change